I work a K-9 in Southern California. My patrol dog has a problem with searching in real deployments. He works well in training, but on the street he looses his search drive. What can I do?

I am a canine handler in a large metropolitan police agency. My patrol dog is a 4 yr old Malinois from Holland. The dog is a complex one to say the least. He is extremely high drive during training, very civil and willing to engage humans absent any equipment, however during real deployments his drive level drops, especially during yard-to-yard searches. In our part of the country (Southern California) we do not practice tracking and air scent from yard to yard. The environment we search in is frequently in the inner city and the yards often have 3-5 dogs, chickens, cats and abandoned cars in them, not to mention people living in shacks in every yard.

During training my patrol dog performs without flaw, high drive, eagerly searching and biting very hard. His drive during training is almost off the scale, quite different than during real deployments. Outside of work he is social, but dominant, not too energetic, independent, and rarely ever carries the look of a happy go lucky dog. His body language expresses concern and a sense of being deliberate whenever he is on a break just being a dog, to be honest he looks tired all of the time. I thought this may be a medical problem, but blood work and all the tests say nothing is wrong.

During real deployments he frequently begins smelling the ground and his activity level drops, I have to tell him to search 3-5 times in each yard. He does not appear to be actively searching for human scent during deployments, but is more interested in other things like cat shit and dog piss during the search. He frequently quits ranging and just begins to sniff the ground. I am not over correcting him during deployments and frequently reward him with bite work during the searches but nothing seems to remedy the situation. He has found persons during searches and has had several bites in the field. His willingness to bite a suspect is never in question, but his willingness to find them is. I realize that he is just a dog and that his natural instincts play a role even during real searches but it is becoming a safety issue.

This dog was handled in the field for about 1 1/2 years by another handler prior to me handling him. I spoke with the prior handler who told me that the dog was just a slow methodical searcher. Apparently the dog displayed the same behavior with him also.

I need to find a way to re stimulate the dog's interest in searching, traditional methods of rewarding him with bite work during the searches has not worked. If you have any suggestions please let me know. I appreciate your time and suggestions. Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Romeo